This proposal requests support for a pilot project designed to investigate a central proposition: that health and effective functioning in the later years depend to a considerable extent on the cognitive appraisal of previous and anticipated circumstances, especially losses and life change. Building upon the prospective investigations in and beyond Children of the Great Depression (1974), this one-year plan entails construction of a model that incorporates individual and contextual influences on cognitive appraisal and psychosocial functioning in later life. Specific problem foci include a) the relationship between adaptive potential and later life behavior and health status; b) the extent to which cognitive appraisal mediates this relationship; and c) the distinctive forms that coping behavior (based on adaptive potential and cognitive appraisal) takes for older men and women, and for various levels and types of adaptive requirements. As outlined in this proposal, Phase I involves mail questionnaires and in-depth interviews from members of a focal sample of 70-79 year olds (N=60). Phase II requests that informants (i.e., kin or non-kin confidants; N=60) provide a second report (questionnaires and interviews) on the focal person's current circumstances and efforts to cope. Thus, a mixed mode data collection is outlined for the linked-samples, providing two estimates of present behavior, and an unusual source of comparable accounts (i.e., self-reports and ratings) among elderly comrades. Two methods of analysis will be used: multivariate (particularly path analytic) techniques to establish links between aspects of adaptive potential and levels of current health and functioning and how this relationship is conditioned by cognitive appraisal; and a systematic comparison of subgroups defined primarily by individual and contextual differences (e.g., gender, severity of past loss experience, present adaptive requirements). Results of this preliminary investigation will initiate a research agenda on key dimensions of life history-based evaluation in elderly populations that should broaden current understanding of behavioral responses, whether adaptive or not, to age-related loss and limitation.